Freddy the Cowboy (8 page)

“This guy wants to make a deal with you,” Cy said. “Tell him, squirrel.”

So Taffy stuck his nose against the wires of the cage and rolled his eyes mournfully at Freddy, and said: “Oh, Mr. Pig—good kind Mr. Pig, I shall always be grateful to you for saving me from being a pot pie, and my heart is full of gratitude—”

Freddy interrupted him. “Don't call me Mr. Pig! My name is Freddy. And you can save your gratitude because
my
heart is full of disgust. We rescued you because we didn't want you made into a rather inferior stew, but you're staying in that cage until we can ship you out of the state.”

“Oh,” said the squirrel. And then he shrugged his shoulders and said: “Very well, my friend; very well. I was going to give you some important information in exchange for my freedom. But of course if the safety of your bank means nothing to you—”

“If you're talking about the First Animal Bank,” Freddy said, “bandits have made several attempts to rob it in the past. They didn't succeed. I'm not worried about anything Mr. Flint could do.”

Taffy looked at him in amazement. “How did you know about that?” he demanded.

Of course Freddy didn't know about any plan of Mr. Flint's. But he remembered how suspicious he had been of the man's interest in the bank, and he guessed that Taffy had heard something at the ranch about it.

“My goodness,” he said, “what kind of a detective do you think I'd be if I didn't know about such things?”

Quik had climbed up to Freddy's shoulder. “Hey, quit bluffing, will you, pig?” he whispered. “Find out what the guy knows. Remember I have fourteen cents as well as a sack of cheese rinds in your darned old bank.”

Freddy said to Taffy: “I know pretty well what they're up to. There are one or two details, however, that I have not yet learned. So that if you want to tell me what you know I might—mind you, I'm only saying that I
might
—let you go free. Under certain conditions, of course.”

Taffy asked what details he wanted to know.

“I want to know when Flint plans to rob the bank, and I want to know who is in it with him.”

“You call those ‘details'?” Taffy demanded. “I call it the whole story. And if you want it, you'll have to pay for it by turning me loose.”

“I don't want it that bad,” said Freddy.

He swung up into the saddle and turned Cy's head homeward, and although Quik kept trying to get his attention, he said nothing more until when they were nearly home, they caught up with the Horrible Ten, who were marching along, two by two and still singing.

“Hey, Horribles!” Freddy called, and they broke ranks and crowded up around the pony. “I've got a prisoner here,” he said, “and he's got some information he doesn't seem to want to give me. Suppose you could tickle him up with your knives and persuade him to talk?”

He winked at Rabbit No. 23, who was the head Horrible, and No. 23 winked back, and then turned to his followers. “Brother Horribles,” he said, “are your knives sharp?”

“Sharp as razors, Your Dreadfulness,” said the rabbits.

“Are they thirsty?”

“They thirst for squirrel's blood, Your Dreadfulness.”

“Release the prisoner, pig,” said No. 23 solemnly.

“Just a minute!” Taffy's voice rose to a desperate squeak. “Look, pig; I'll talk—I'll tell you! Don't let these—these things grab me!” He shivered as he looked down at the Horribles, who were war-dancing in a circle, waving their knives.

So Freddy nodded to No. 23, and the rabbits drew off a little way, and then Taffy told them what he knew. It wasn't a great deal. He had overheard Mr. Flint and two of the cowboys who worked for him, Slim and Jasper, planning to break into the bank. They were going to ride down, cut the alarm bell rope, and then go down into the vaults and steal anything valuable they could find. “That pig is suspicious right now,” Mr. Flint had said. “So we'll wait a week or so. It's a cinch. Place is run by a bunch of animals; what could they do even if they caught us there? And suppose they recognize us—who's going to take the word of a pig on the witness stand?”

“And now, Mr. Pig, won't you please let me go?” Taffy begged.

Freddy looked at him thoughtfully, then he put the cage down on the ground and held a whispered consultation with No. 23.

“Brother Horribles,” said No. 23, “gather round and look upon the prisoner.”

The rabbits crowded up and peered through the wires, and some of them poked at the cowering Taffy with their knives.

“Brother Horribles,” said No. 23, “you will recognize the prisoner again?”

“Yes, Your Dreadfulness.”

“And if the order
is
given, you will find him, wherever he is, and chop him into very small pieces?”

“With pleasure, Your Dreadfulness.”

“Good. We will now withdraw, Brother Horribles.”

So the rabbits marched off, and when they had gone Freddy opened the cage. “You can go home,” he said to Taffy. “And you'll be perfectly safe as long as you behave yourself. But if I hear of your holding any more animals for ransom—well, I guess you know who'll come calling on you some night.”

So Taffy slunk off, and Freddy went on home. It wasn't until next morning when he was saddling Cy to ride in to Centerboro to buy blank cartridges for his gun, that he saw Jinx. The cat came strolling up from the barnyard, stopping here to sniff at a daisy, there to tap playfully at a scurrying ant; putting on an elaborate show of having nothing on his mind, nothing at all. Freddy grinned: he knew what was bothering his friend.

“Morning, Jinx,” he said. “Still all in one piece, I'm happy to see. The Horrible Ten didn't get you, then?”

Jinx sniffed contemptuously. “Who, them? They'd better not try it!”

“They were around asking about you earlier this morning,” said the pig.

Jinx sniffed again. “Oh, yeah?” He watched Freddy tighten the cinch and swing himself into the saddle, then he said suddenly, “Hey, wait a minute. Look, Freddy; this Horrible outfit—well, there aren't any such animals, are there?”

“My goodness,” said the pig, “you saw 'em, same as I did. Of course when I got that letter I thought it was just a joke. To tell you the truth, I thought maybe you were the one that sent it to me. But then—golly, there the things were, knives and all! Awful, weren't they?”

“Well, I suppose I'd better tell you,” said the cat. “I did write the letter. I made up the Horrible Ten. Shucks, it was just a joke! But it isn't a joke any more. How could they come alive, Freddy, when I just
thought
'em?”

“Oh, well,” said Freddy, “as long as you've owned up to it, I ought to tell you who they are.” And he did.

There was one good thing about Jinx, he could laugh just as hard when the joke was on himself as when it was on someone else. He just lay down and rolled in the grass. “Rabbits!” he said. “Me lying awake all last night for fear rabbits were after me! You wait till I get hold of that 23.”

“You mustn't do anything to him, Jinx,” Freddy said. “I was the one that put him up to it.”

“Shucks, I want to congratulate him. Guess I'll go up now and see if he's home.” And he trotted off.

When Freddy set out to do something, he was never satisfied with just halfway doing it. To have a horse and a cowboy suit and a gun belt with two guns in it would have been enough for some people. But not for him. He was determined to learn how to ride and shoot and handle a rope as well as any real cowboy. And because he wanted to learn, he learned quickly. He had a good teacher in Cy, and within a few days he could stick tight to the saddle while the pony whirled and crow-hopped and bucked and reared. Of course Cy didn't really try to throw Freddy. He could have done that easily. But he tried to give the pig as much as he could take, and Freddy could take a little more every day.

Freddy was getting quick on the draw, too. He had practised by the hour, and now when Cy gave the signal he could yank both guns—the real one and the water pistol—out of their holsters and point them and pull the triggers, all inside of a single second.

Freddy didn't neglect other sides of life on the range either. There was an old guitar in the Bean attic. Before they were married, Mr. Bean used to serenade Mrs. Bean with it. Some unkind people said that she married him in order to stop the racket, but this doesn't make sense, for when he sang, Mr. Bean's voice was just a sort of grumble—so low that you could hardly hear it. Freddy got the guitar out and strung and tuned it, and he worked away at it evenings until he could strum a pretty good accompaniment to
Home on the Range
and other such songs.

Be worked until he could strum a good accompaniment.

In the evening, two days after Taffy's rescue, Freddy was sitting out in the new canvas chair Mr. Bean had bought him, twanging his guitar in the moonlight, when Charles came down through the pasture.

“Hi, rooster,” said Freddy. “Back from your travels? Did you have any adventures?”

“Adventures!” said Charles bitterly. “I knew how it would be when Henrietta insisted on coming along. You can't take your wife along when you ride out in search of adventure. Because what happens? Instead of looking for adventure you go visit all her relatives. And she's got relatives in every chicken coop in the county. Just as sure as I saw a nice likely looking piece of road or a patch of woods where some real adventure might be waiting, Henrietta would say: ‘Come along, Charles; Cousin Eunice lives down this lane,' and we'd drop in and stay a couple days.

“Well, late this afternoon we were up by the end of the lake, and we saw a lot of cowboys sitting around a campfire, and I wanted to go over and see what was going on. But no, Aunt Effie Peck lived up the road a piece, and we had to go see her. She's another of 'em. She's just like a radio, except she don't even pause for station identification. So I quit. I sneaked off home. I been talked to death by relatives, Freddy. And now I'm going down to the henhouse and get some sleep before Henrietta gets back. Adventures—ha!” And he started wearily on.

He hadn't gone more than a dozen yards when ten little round heads popped up out of the grass in front of him, and ten little glittering knives were waved menacingly at him. They sang their song and began to do their war dance, working around behind Charles so that the startled rooster was surrounded.

“Hey!” he squawked. “What is this? Get out of here—let me alone!”

They stopped their dance, and the head Horrible said: “Brother Horribles, what would you like for supper?”

“We would like rooster hash, Your Dreadfulness,” they replied.

“And how would you go about preparing this delicious dish, Brother Horribles?”

“First we would grab this rooster and chop him up small with our little knives, Your Dreadfulness, and then—”

Neither Charles, cowering in the bloodthirsty circle, nor the Horrible Ten had noticed Henrietta coming down the hill. She paused for a moment, and then with an angry squawk and a flutter of wings she plunged down into them, scattering the rabbits, who squeaked in terror as her sharp beak nipped them. In half a minute every Horrible had vanished.

Henrietta then pounced angrily on Charles. “You!” she said. “A fine one you'd be to go wandering off by yourself in search of adventure! If I leave you alone five minutes you're in trouble. Get along home with you!” And she chased him off down to the henhouse.

Chapter 8

The animals who had set out in search of adventure began wandering back home next day, and at a meeting in the barn that night they told their stories. With the exception of Charles they had all had a good time, and some of the stories were quite exciting. Mrs. Wiggins, who had had the foresight to take some money with her, had stopped at an antique shop along the road and bought a hand-painted fire shovel for Mrs. Bean—it had a little winter scene on the shovel part and roses on the handle, and she got a moustache cup for Mr. Bean.